Israel

from Baltimore Jewish Home - 4-28-22

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15.2M Jews Worldwide

The world’s Jewish population reached 15.2 million by the end of 2020 – approximately 1.4 million less than on the eve of the Holocaust in 1939, when the number was 16.6 million, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.

Israel is home to 6.9 million Jews; when the state was established in 1948 there were only 650,000 Jews living there.

Six million Jews live in the United States.

France has the largest population of Jews outside of Israel and the United States, with 445,000 Jews living there.

The next nine countries with the most Jews are Canada (393,000 Jews), the United Kingdom (292,000 Jews), Argentina (175,000 Jews), Russia (150,000 Jews), and Germany and Australia, which are tied at numbers eight and nine, with 118,000 Jews each.

Of the Jews living in Israel, 5.4 million were born in Israel, and 1.5 million immigrated. Two-thirds of the Jews who made aliyah came from the U.S. or Europe, and most of the rest came from Africa or Asia.

MK Chikli Ousted

The Knesset House Committee on Monday authorized Yamina’s request to oust renegade Yamina MK Amichai Chikli, after raucous deliberations that stretched out for some 12 hours.

The move, which carries significant personal sanctions on Chikli, is widely seen as a sign to other Yamina lawmakers to stay in line after former coalition whip Idit Silman destroyed the coalition’s majority by leaving it in early April. Yamina filed its request to eject Chikli from the party a day after Silman’s departure.

Chikli will now be barred from running in any existing Knesset faction in the next election, among other punitive measures.

Seven members of the committee voted in favor of declaring Chikli a defector, while three, including Silman, did not participate in the vote.

Silman, who is a member of the committee, said during the hearing, “I felt that I am loyal to my values and to my voters. This hearing is vengeful.”

Grouping herself with Chikli, she said: “We are not the defectors; we are going with the promises, the platform and the values we promised to Yamina voters.”

Chikli and his supporters claim that diverging with the party over ideological grounds may be allowed under Knesset rules and that Chikli has maintained Yamina’s electoral promises while the party has abandoned them.

The party, represented by Religious Affairs Minister Matan Kahana, has in turn claimed that Chikli actively worked against the Yamina-led government – from refusing to vote for its investiture to voting no-confidence in the government to voting against key legislation.

“MK Chikli, if values were the basis of your decision, how did you dare to vote against the Citizenship Law? How did you dare to vote against a clear security interest of the State of Israel?” Kahana said, adding that Chikli had agreed ahead of time to vote in favor and then did the opposite.

In all, Chikli voted against Yamina’s position 754 times, including against the state budget, Kahana said.

“The legal situation before us is simple, clear and unequivocal: MK Amichai Chikli has taken every possible action to defect from the Yam-

ina faction and is actively working against the faction and with a clear aim to harm it and its leaders,” said the minister.

Chikli is the third MK to be ejected from a party. Most recently, former MK Orly Levy-Abekasis was ejected in 2017 from her first political home, Yisrael Beytenu, 10 months after operating as an independent MK in protest of Yisrael Beytenu’s entry into a Likud-led government under terms she opposed.

Levy-Abekasis went on to form a new party, Gesher, which failed to cross the threshold in its first election but banded with Labor and Meretz to enter Knesset in another election shortly thereafter. Today, she is an MK with Likud.

Terrorist Sentenced to Life

The Lod District Court on Sunday sentenced the terrorist who murdered a 39-year-old father of four two years ago to life in prison.

On August 26, 2020, Rabbi Shai Ohayon was murdered in a terror attack in the central city of Petah Tikva.

His killer, Khalil Abd al-Khaliq Dweikat, from the Palestinian Authority village of Rujeeb, was convicted last year of murder under aggravated circumstances, as well as of “unlawful possession of a knife in the circumstances of an act of terrorism.”

On Sunday, he was sentenced to life in prison and ordered to pay approximately $79,000 in compensation to the Ohayon family.

At the time of the murder, Dweikat had been in Israel as the holder of a work permit and worked at a construction site in Petah Tikva.

According to prosecutors, “The defendant considered and arrived at a decision to kill a Jewish Israeli citizen or soldier with a knife … for Palestine, the Palestinian people, Al-Aqsa Mosque and Allah.

“The defendant pulled out the knife from his pocket and stabbed the deceased with three deep cuts,” they added. After Ohayon called out for help and attracted the attention of passersby, Dweikat left him, already in critical condition, and pocketed the knife. Dweikat considered searching for another victim but was quickly arrested.

Dweikat later confessed his crime to the investigators and did not “show any empathy, remorse, or regret for the victim or his family,” prosecutors said.

Dweikat, a father of six, had no history of terror activities prior to the killing.

Shabak Rounds Up Terror Cell

Shabak on Monday announced that it foiled an attempt by the Islamic Jihad terror group to enlist Palestinian Authority (PA) Arabs to carry out terror attacks against Israeli targets.

According to Shabak, several PA Arabs from the Jenin area were detained for planning a bombing attack on Israeli farmers in the area. One of those arrested is Yasmin Shaaban, a 40-year-old mother of four.

The Islamic Jihad operatives were directing the cell to build explosive devices for use in a terror attack, Shabak added. Footage showed cell members testing an explosive device shaped similarly to a rocket.

Shaaban was accused of passing information between the cell members and the Islamic Jihad operatives

in Gaza. Her interrogation led to the arrest of seven other suspects, all allegedly part of the same cell.

Shaaban herself is an Islamic Jihad operative who previously served jail time for her role in planning a suicide bombing.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said, “The Shabak and security forces are in constant pursuit of Palestinian terror cells that are planning to murder us. We won’t let up the pressure. Every terrorist should know … that ultimately we’ll put our hands on him.”

Shabak added, “This is systematic and extensive activity that is being driven by organizations, including the Islamic Jihad organization, in order to destabilize the entire region.”

Status Quo on Temple Mount?

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on Sunday reiterated Israel’s commitment to preserving the status quo on the Temple Mount

In a Sunday afternoon briefing to foreign journalists, Lapid said, “Israel is committed to the status quo on the Temple Mount. Muslims pray on the Temple Mount; non-Muslims only visit. There is no change –there will be no change.”

On Saturday night, Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai told Kan News, “There are a lot more Jews who are going up to the Temple Mount. There are some that stop on the way and pray, which was forbidden.”

Lapid, when asked by Times of Israel about Shai’s comments, said that his colleague is “misinformed” but admitted that “somebody might sneak by, now and then.”

He added, “By the way, I don’t feel comfortable with the idea that Jews do not have freedom of religion in the State of Israel and that Jews are banned from the site.

“I do know what instructions the police have – and they’re enforcing them to the best of their ability – that Muslims can pray on the Temple Mount and that other religions can visit.

“Israel has made substantial efforts to stop Jewish extremist elements as well,” he said. But, he emphasized, “We have to put things into proportion. There have been 200 to 300 extremists sent by Hamas and Islamic Jihad to incite riots. Just yesterday, 95,000 worshipers came to the Temple Mount to hold a holy ceremony, and to hold it in peace. We have done everything to ensure peaceful prayer.”

In a separate incident on Friday, Hamas activists on the Temple Mount mounted a public and “antisemitic call for the slaughter of Israeli citizens,” Lapid noted.

Does Your Chocolate Have salmonella?

The Strauss Group on Monday issued a recall for a long list of chocolate products after multiple samples of salmonella were discovered in the factor’s Elite production line.

The Health Ministry’s food service was immediately updated, Arutz Sheva noted. In coordination with the Ministry and as a precautionary measure, the company has issued a recall of all chocolate products with certain “best before” dates.

Later, Unilever Israel recalled many of their own products, as a result of the same contamination.

In a statement, Unilever said, “Although Strauss/Elite has confirmed to us that the chocolate it supplied as a raw material has been tested and found to be in good condition, and although our tests have shown that our products are in good condition, Strauss Ice Cream at Unilever Israel announces a recall on some of our products. This is as a means of additional caution.”

Items in the Unilever recall include Magnum ice cream, Pesek Zman ice cream, Solero coconut ice cream bars, and multiple flavors of the Kremisimo ice cream tubs.

Meanwhile, Strauss has emphasized that operations are underway to locate the source of the problem and that production and distribution will resume once everything is deemed safe.

Bennett Food Fight

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has dismissed claims that his family’s food expenses – 26,000 NIS per month for a family of six – are outrageously high and at the taxpayers’ expense.

According to a Channel 13 report, the Bennett family regularly orders takeout to the tune of several thousand shekel per week. These bills are sent to the government, and the Bennett family is then reimbursed for the expenses, the report said.

Bennett lives in his home in Ra’anana, claiming that the official Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem requires renovation before his family can move there. Meanwhile, no renovations have been carried out in the ten months Bennett has been in office.

Bennett does not entertain or host official visits in Ra’anana; the food expenses for that residence are solely those of his family. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, was unable to separate his family’s food expenses from those of the official entertainments, given that he lived in the official residence.

The Channel 13 report also emphasized that the cost of renovating the Bennett home to function as his official residence – in violation of Israeli law – is also falling on the taxpayers’ shoulders.

Responding to this report, Bennett’s office insisted that his spending was much lower than that of the Netanyahu family and justified the takeout expenses by claiming that the Bennetts are saving taxpayer shekels by not hiring a full-time cook.

The statement added together the Netanyahus’ expenses at their private home in Caesarea and the official Jerusalem residence, and underlined that Bennett has not made use of much of his permitted budget.

“In the face of a machine of lies, I must present the truth,” Bennett wrote in a Facebook post criticized for focusing excessively on Netanyahu.

“There is an attempt to paint everyone as corrupt. But I am not Bibi [Netanyahu], Gilat is not Sara, my children are not Yair… The expenses of the prime ministerial residence have shrunk dramatically in my term,” he asserted. “The attempts to present me as a hedonist are laughable.”

The Likud party responded by noting that the money spent by Bennett is being spent on his private home and noted that “the law states that the official residence of the prime minister will be in Jerusalem, not Ra’anana.”

“Bennett should open his home to the public to let them see the new basement, carpentry, and redecorating that has been done with public money – something the Netanyahu family never did.”